Medical Jurisprudence Commons^™

Baker V. Women & Infants Hospital Of Rhode Island, 268 A.3d 1165 (R.I. 2022), Melissa Richi

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ethical Malpractice, Nadia N. Sawicki

Faculty Publications & Other Works

Traditional claims of medical malpractice arise from deviations from medical standards of care regarding knowledge, professional decision-making, or technical skill. While many standards of ethical behavior are just as firmly rooted in medical custom as these more technical standards, U.S. courts have typically been unwilling to acknowledge ethical violations as compensable breaches of legal duty. This Article poses a question that should be at the forefront of discussions about medical liability in the 21st century – whether malpractice law should evolve to recognize violations of professional ethical norms as a basis for tort liability. In evaluating this question, it draws …

The Conscience Defense To Malpractice, Nadia N. Sawicki

Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article presents the first empirical study of state conscience laws that establish explicit procedural protections for medical providers who refuse to participate in providing reproductive health services, including abortion, sterilization, contraception, and emergency contraception.

Scholarship and public debate about law's role in protecting health care providers' conscience rights typically focus on who should be protected, what actions should be protected, and whether there should be any limitations on the exercise of conscience rights. This study, conducted in accordance with best methodological practices from the social sciences for policy surveillance and legal mapping, is the first to provide concrete data …

Hospital Peer Review Standards And Due Process: Moving From Tort Doctrine Toward Contract Principles Based On Clinical Practice Guidelines, Katharine A. Van Tassel

Katharine Van Tassel

This Article proposes a solution to the problems associated with the current use of vague standards in peer review. This Article will examine the proposal that medical staffs switch from ad hoc judicial decision-making to rule-making. This switch will allow medical staffs to abandon the troublesome practice of applying vague 'standard of care' measures ex post facto. In its stead, express contractual terminology could be adopted, such as 'expectations of performance,' which incorporates specifically chosen and uniquely tailored clinical practice guidelines ('CPGs') directly into the medical staff by-laws. Describing the expectations of physician performance in express contractual terms enables physicians …

Extracting Medical Injury Information From The Legal System To Improve Patient Safety In The Health System: A Social Utility Approach, Mary Chaffee

University of Massachusetts Law Review

As many as 400,000 people die each year, and a million are injured, by preventable medical injuries sustained in the U.S. health system. Collection of data to enhance understanding of how unintended medical injuries happen is an essential part of harm-reduction strategies. While health system data collection and reporting processes have improved in recent years, the scope and intractability of the medical injuries problem demands new efforts. The legal system could contribute valuable medical injury data to patient safety efforts but current practices largely prevent it. In medical malpractice claims where parties settle, case information is routinely protected from disclosure …

The Treatment For Malpractice – Physician, Enhance Thyself: The Impact Of Neuroenhancements For Medical Malpractice, Harvey L. Fiser

Pace Law Review

This article will introduce some of the issues and offer some possible guidelines which may eventually guide cases of medical malpractice and medical care in the face of neurointerventions. First, I will briefly address the standard of care in medical malpractice cases in general. Second, I will discuss some of the existing and potential physical and neurological enhancements available for physicians. Finally, I will explore how these neurointerventions could alter the standards for medical malpractice for both the enhanced doctors and the entire medical profession.

Remodeling Federal Medical Malpractice Act: A Possible Improvement To The Affordable Care Act, Nancy Kubasek, Tiffany Durham

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

During the debates about healthcare reform, the Congressional Budget Office found that federal medical liability reform could drastically reduce federal budget deficits, yet political and legal scholars could not reach agreement about the best way for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) to provide such reform. Instead, provisions were made to fund state level demonstration projects. The law that is considered one of the most successful models to date of conventional tort reform is the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act of California. This Article exams that legislation and discusses how we might use what can be learned from …

Medical Malpractice Reform Measures And Their Effects, Robert Leflar

Robert B Leflar

New rules and methods for medical injury dispute resolution have been launched in New Hampshire and New York, and demonstration projects are underway elsewhere. This article describes major medical malpractice reforms undertaken and proposed in recent years. Reforms are classified as (1) liability-limiting initiatives favoring health-care providers; (2) procedural innovations promoted as improving dispute resolution processes, such as patient compensation funds, “sorry” laws, disclosure and early offer laws, health courts, and safe harbor laws; and (3) major conceptual reforms to move liability away from physicians to hospitals or administrative no-fault compensation systems. Empirical evidence about the practical effects of already-implemented …

The Law Of Medical Misadventure In Japan, Robert B. Leflar

Robert B Leflar

This paper offers a comprehensive overview of Japanese law and practice relating to iatrogenic (medically-caused) injury, with comparisons to other nations’ medical law systems. The paper addresses criminal sanctions for Japanese physicians’ negligent and illegal acts; civil law principles of substantive law and related issues of procedure, practice, and liability insurance; and administrative measures including health ministry programs aimed at expanding and improving the quality of peer review within Japanese medicine, and a recently implemented no-fault compensation system for birth-related injuries. Among the paper’s findings are these. Criminal and civil actions increased rapidly after highly publicized medical error events at …

Malpractice Suits And Physician Apologies In Cancer Care, Eugene Chung, Jill R. Horwitz, John A.E. Pottow, Reshma Jagsi

Articles

Conside the following case: The patient is a 44-year-old woman who presents for radiation treatment of an isolated locoregional recurrence of breat cancer in her chest wall, 3 years after undergoing masectomy. At the time of diagnosis, she had T2N2M0 disease, with four of 15 lymph nodes involved with tumor. She received a masectomy with negative margins and appropriate chemotherapy, but none of her physicians talked to her about postmasectomy radiation therapy, which would clearly have been indicated to reduce her risk of locoregional failure and would have been expected to improve her likelihood of survival. She asks the radiation …

Juries And Medical Malpractice Claims: Empirical Facts Versus Myths, Neil Vidmar

Faculty Scholarship

Juries in medical malpractice trials are viewed as incompetent, anti-doctor, irresponsible in awarding damages to patients, and casting a threatening shadow over the settlement process. Several decades of systematic empirical research yields little support for these claims. This article summarizes those findings. Doctors win about three cases of four that go to trial. Juries are skeptical about inflated claims. Jury verdicts on negligence are roughly similar to assessments made by medical experts and judges. Damage awards tend to correlate positively with the severity of injury. There are defensible reasons for large damage awards. Moreover, the largest awards are typically settled …

Medical Malpractice Law, Kathleen M. Mccauley, William F. Demarest Iii

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Do Defendants Pay What Juries Award - Post-Verdict Haircuts In Texas Medical Malpractice Cases, 1988-2003, David A. Hyman, Bernard S. Black, Kathryn Zeiler, Charles Silver, William M. Sage

Faculty Scholarship

Legal scholars, legislators, policy advocates, and the news media frequently use jury verdicts to draw conclusions about the performance of the tort system. However actual payouts can differ greatly from verdicts. We report evidence on post-verdict payouts from the most comprehensive longitudinal study of matched jury verdicts and payouts. Using data on all insured medical malpractice claims in Texas from 1988-2003 in which the plaintiff received at least $25,000 (in 1988 dollars) following a jury trial, we find that most jury awards received "haircuts." Seventy-five percent of plaintiffs received a payout less than the adjusted verdict (jury verdict plus pre-judgment …

Do Defendants Pay What Juries Award? Post-Verdict Haircuts In Texas Medical Malpractice Cases, 1988–2003, David A. Hyman, Bernard Black, Kathryn Zeiler, Charles Silver, William M. Sage

Faculty Scholarship

Legal scholars, legislators, policy advocates, and the news media frequently use jury verdicts to draw conclusions about the performance of the tort system. However, actual payouts can differ greatly from verdicts. We report evidence on post-verdict payouts from the most comprehensive longitudinal study of matched jury verdicts and payouts. Using data on all insured medical malpractice claims in Texas from 1988–2003 in which the plaintiff received at least $25,000 (in 1988 dollars) following a jury trial, we find that most jury awards received “haircuts.” Seventy-five percent of plaintiffs received a payout less than the adjusted verdict (jury verdict plus prejudgment …

Medical Error As Reportable Event, As Tort, As Crime: A Transpacific Comparison, Robert B. Leflar, Futoshi Iwata

Robert B Leflar

All nations seek to reduce the human toll from medical error, but variations in legal and institutional structures guide those efforts into different trajectories. This article compares legal and institutional responses to patient safety problems in the United States and Japan, addressing developments in civil malpractice law (including discoverability of internal hospital documents), administrative practice (including medical accident reporting systems), and - of particular significance in Japan - criminal law. In the U.S., battles over rules of malpractice litigation are fierce; tort law occupies center stage. The hospital accreditation process plays a critical role in medical quality control, and peer …

Report Of Seminar On Law And Medicine, Office Of Continuing Legal Education At The University Of Kentucky College Of Law, Charles M. Leibson, John A. Krichbaum, Paul A. Van Pernis, William C. Ball, Galen J. White, Harry N. Peterson, B. J. Anderson, Harvey L. Ruben, William D. Weitzel, Oliver Grant Bruton Jr., Oliver H. Barber Jr., Joe C. Savage, Robert J. Turnley, William G. Winter, L. T. Grant, William D. Grubbs, Charles Landrum Jr., Leslie G. Whitmer, Robert Rich, Edward A. Rothschild

Continuing Legal Education Materials

Reports from the UK/CLE Seminar on Law and Medicine held May 26-28, 1976.

The Malpractice Problem-Its Cause And Cure: The Physician's Perspective, James J. Stewart

Indiana Law Journal

Symposium: The 1975 Indiana Medical Malpractice Act

Malpractice By Veterinarians, Martin J. Strobel

Cleveland State Law Review

The veterinarian's liability is measured by the same basic standards applicable to physicians and surgeons. In both fields the technical nature of the malpractice action creates special problems. To determine the issue of liability the jury must identify both the historical facts and the standard of care. Attempting to resolve issues of medical fact may be difficult for a lay jury; such resolution demanding as it does, not merely an appraisal of the witnesses' demeanor and character, but an evaluation of their stories in the context of the situation giving rise to the cause of action.

Malpractice In Dental Anesthesiology, Allen L. Perry

Cleveland State Law Review

Cases invovlving dental anesthesia reveal that breaches of the duty to use proper skill and care have occurred in selection of the type of anesthetic, method of administration, failure to examine the patient, use of unsterile instruments, failure to use safety devices, and failure to properly care for patients under the influence of anesthesia. Persons practicing dental anesthesiology, like those pracing medicine and surgery, must be duly able and careful. This rule is elementary and is founded on considerations of public policy. Whenever the behavior of a dentist or dental anesthesiologist has been of a nature such that a dereliction …

Torts - Limitation Of Actions - Malpractice Statute Of Limitations Does Not Accrue Until Patient Discovers That Negligently Administered Anesthesia Is The Cause Of The Injury, Robert M. Schwartz

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Abstracts Of Recent Cases, Robert William Burk Jr.

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Contibutory Negligence In Medical Malpractice, W. David Alderson

Cleveland State Law Review

Three categories of cases have been noted out of the mass of factually individualistic ones concerning medical malpractice and contributory negligence. The first, where a breach of duty owed the patient by the physician is lacking, involves an injury produced by the patient's own negligence. In the second, the patient's negligence directly contributes to the severity of an injury already present because of the physician's negligence. The plaintiff-patient's damages are not mitigated but rather entirely precluded in light of his acts. Thus a plea of contributory negligence is a complete defense. The third category includes those cases where a time …

Informed Consent To Medical Treatment, Milton Oppenheim

Cleveland State Law Review

Medical malpractice is usually considered in terms of negligent conduct by the physician in the course of the physician-patient relation. Many of the actions are not predicated on the law of negligence, although this type of malpractice undoubtedly is the most common type of litigation. A substantial group of cases deal with unauthorized operations, which are characterized as battery, emerging from lack of informed consent.

X-Ray Malpractice, Lucien B. Karlovec

Cleveland State Law Review

Doctors today are subjected to many malpractice suits involving non-surgical injuries. Common among these nonsurgical injuries are x-ray injuries. Most of the injuries produced by x-rays have been excessive skin reactions, i.e., burns, occurring during either diagnostic or therapeutic procedures. The improper use of x-rays can produce damage other than skin burns, i.e., fibrosis (in effect, shrinkage) of internal organs, sterility or prenatal injuries.

Shartel & Plant: The Law Of Medical Practice, C. W. Muehlberger

Michigan Law Review

A Review of THE LAW OF MEDICAL PRACTICE. By Burke Shartel and Marcus L. Plant.

Malpractice And The Statute Of Limitations

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Practice And Procedure-Third-Party Practice-Subrogation And Contribution- Right Of Defendant To Join Physician Who Aggravated Lnjuries, Richard B. Gushée S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

A brought an action against B for injuries suffered in an automobile accident and aggravation of those injuries by the negligent treatment of a physician, D. B filed a third-party complaint against D for malpractice contending that D was liable over to him for all or a part of the judgment recovered by A. D's motion to dismiss the third-party complaint for want of a sufficient cause of action was denied. On appeal, held, affirmed. A tort-feasor who has been held liable for injuries is subrogated to any right of action which the injured party may …

Agency In Malpractice Cases: Funk V. Bohnam, Walter E. Treanor

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Physicians And Surgeons, Harry B. Hutchins

Book Chapters

Professor Hutchins's entry regarding the subject of the title. Includes voluminous cross-references and precedents. Begins with a five-page outline.